Last year, Brianne Goutal just missed winning the Pessoa/USEF Hunter Seat Medal Finals. This year, it was obvious she wasn’t going to finish second again, and she rode her way through three rounds to the top, on Oct. 16 during the Pennsylvania National Junior Weekend in Harrisburg, Pa.

“I came here with really nothing to lose. I just wanted to have fun, do the best I could, and luckily my horse, Logan, was as good as he always is. Everything kind of fell into place,” Goutal said.

Goutal’s day was made even sweeter when good friend and barn-mate Sloane Coles rode into second place right behind her. And Julie Welles, who’s been remarkably consistent as well all year, claimed third. Maria Schaub picked up fourth.

Goutal, Coles and Schaub all ride with the Beacon Hill team of Frank and Stacia Madden, Krista Freundlich and Max Amaya. Welles rides with Missy Clark and Linda Langemeier. I

n addition to her second in the USEF Medal last year, Goutal won the USEF Show Jumping Talent Search Finals-East (N.J.) and the Tad Coffin Washington International Horse Show Equitation Classic Finals (D.C.).

“She has an amazing natural ability. She’s so accurate, and she really took a shot in the last round,” said Cynthia Hankins, who judged the class with Scott Hofstetter. “We were a little nervous in the test, because she was quite a few points ahead of the others, and we didn’t want to lose her. But she really took a shot in the test and impressed us. She did one simple change and one flying change, which made us nervous at first, but it worked, and then she rode up to the gallop for the last fence.”

Hankins and Hofstetter called Goutal back on top after two rounds, to test the top five. The test involved jumping a fence on the long side, then counter-cantering around the end of the ring to an oxer. Then riders had to trot at a set of flowerboxes on the ground, just 10 feet or so in front of a trot jump. Then, down the long side, they were to demonstrate two changes of lead in a straight line, and then hand-gallop the last oxer.

A Different Plan
Goutal was the only one of the five who chose not to ask for two flying changes on the long side.

“When they first announced the test, they announced ‘simple changes,’ and even after they’d corrected it to just ‘changes of lead,’ I couldn’t get the ‘simple’ out of my mind. So, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to do one of each, and I’m either going to mess it up, or it’s going to be good,’ ” explained Goutal.

“Logan’s a little bit difficult in the right-to-left change, so I decided to do the simple change there,” she added.

Goutal’s gamble with the lead changes worked, and she and Coles were also the only two to land off the first jump in the counter-canter.

“We were very impressed when both Brianne and Sloane asked their horses to land on the counter lead and were able to hold it the whole way around the turn. That’s what we were actually looking for as the ideal. It wasn’t that you had to do that to win, but it was the perfect way to do it. They were in control of their horse the whole way—on take-off, over the jump and on landing,” Hofstetter said.

Coles’ performance in the final test moved her up from third to second. She’d actually been called back on top of round 1 after the 279 riders who attempted the first-round course had gone.

“Sloane’s position was very solid. They were very close in the first round, and Sloane even was on top by 1 point. When they came back, Brianne just looked a little more solid and confident,” said Hankins. “But they both were stylists, which we loved, and we hoped they would rise to the top of the class. They rode with style and had a lot of feel with their hands and rode forward.”

Welles, of West Simsbury, Conn., moved up from fourth after the first round to second going into the test. But a lowered rail at the first fence and a mistake moved her back down to third.

“She had beautiful technique, but she had the rail, and then the jump she did off the counter lead was fairly conservative and deep,” said Hankins.

Welles, who doesn’t own an equitation horse and catch-rides for Clark, has been having a stellar fall season, winning the USEF Show Jumping Talent Search-East Finals and the Region 1 Maclay Regionals.

Schaub performed an almost flawless final test to take the fourth spot. Blythe Marano, another Clark student, had been called back in fourth, but an awkward trot jump dropped her down to fifth.

No Tricks
To winnow the field of 279 down to 25 for the second round, Hofstetter and Hankins built a first-round course that “separated the riders without putting a bad taste into the mouths of the first-time riders here,” said Frank Madden.

It forced the riders to ride off their eye, plan and execute a flowing track, and be precise to each fence. There weren’t any of the “tricks” characteristic of some finals courses, but complex, yet straightforward, questions (see course chart).

Riders started off over a wingless square oxer, going away from the in-gate, and then bent left to a straw jump vertical. A tight rollback off the end of the ring led to a white oxer, which was followed by a sharp right turn to a vertical, and then an immediate left to an oxer-to-oxer one stride in-and-out.

This first group of fences caused their share of problems. Some horses seemed surprised by the sharp turn off the rail to the oxer at fence 3 and either stopped or dropped the back rail. And many riders had difficulty negotiating a fluid tight turn to the following vertical. And some, slowed down by that twisting and turning, didn’t build up enough impulsion again to make the long one stride in the in-and-out work.

 After the in-and-out, riders cantered around the end of the ring to a unique line. A wingless stone wall was the first element, and riders had an option at two split-rail verticals—set side-by-side but staggered about 6 feet—in the middle of the line, which concluded with an oxer. They could either jump to the outside, pushing for a long four strides to the right split-rail fence, and then a short four strides to the oxer. Or, they could jump to the left, with a short four strides to the other split-rail fence and a long four strides to the oxer. Ninety percent of the class chose to jump to the right, going from the long distance to the short, although both seemed to ride well.

Then, riders cantered around the end of the ring to a bending two-stride combination of verticals. Set right in the corner of the ring, this combination took quite a few horses by surprise, and many stopped here. Then, they circled around to a wooden coop, followed by a rollback to the right, and a long gallop to the first of two fan oxers, set a bending five or six strides apart. Another rollback led to a long gallop straight down the ring to the final oxer.

The course tested the riders’ ability to maintain impulsion and control around twisting turns and off blind approaches, and to ride distances off their eye.

“We were looking for more of a hunter type of ride, where they got out of the tack and were riding taking pace. We didn’t want to see them dedicated to the numbers, but to ride off the feel and the track. We wanted to see forward riding,” said Hofstetter.

“I thought the courses were very challenging but definitely doable. A lot of times at finals you have courses that seem impossible to do well because they have all kinds of unusual questions,” Goutal said.

The second-round course, which featured more fluid bending lines and riding off the eye, didn’t shuffle the standings too much, but it did give the judges the top five they wanted to test.

A New Strategy Works
Frank Madden was beaming with pride over Brianne Goutal’s, Sloane Coles’ and Maria Schaub’s top-placing performances.

“What I enjoyed most was their relaxation due to the fact that they’re such competent, confident riders. I was really happy to see how fresh and eager the horses looked going into the last test. I think that gave them a little extra spark,” Madden said.

Stacia Madden, his wife and assistant trainer, explained that this year, they didn’t follow the traditional night-before-Medal-finals routine of giving lessons and riding well into the night.

“We actually tried a little different strategy this time,” said Stacia.

“We didn’t ride or lesson last night—we just sent the kids to sleep. And we treated today like it was any other horse show. We got the horses out to ride and prepare depending on what time in the day they went. The kids got to sleep, and I think we had fresh horses and fresh riders, and it showed,” she said.

For more coverage of the Pessoa/USEF Medal Finals, go to the online coverage archives on www.chronofhorse. com.